Excerpt from Divided Desire: Chapter 4 - The Desert of Desire

Why is one who has made such a deduction a fool? Firstly, he has made this conclusion internally, in his heart, the deepest seat of all human volition. No human knows their own heart well enough to make such a final analysis of reality that says God does not exist. To believe such a thing in the deepest recesses of one’s self is to betray that one does not know the heart, does not know the self, at all. For had one known self, one would have discovered in the heart, that gaping vacuum, so famously called by Blaise Pascal the “God-shaped vacuum”. But the fact that this vacuum is not discovered by atheistic minded people is again only a symptom of a deeper issue: being so connected to and influenced by prevailing secular thought in the global village, that one is totally disconnected from self, others, and God. So connected with prevailing anti-God dogma, and disconnected from self is the godless person, that they cannot see the need and they cannot feel the desire, for God. They are foolish in their deduction because they have made it without first connecting with their own heart, which would whisper through that gaping vacuum, “God exists”. More than this, we certainly cannot know this God-shaped vacuum exists within our hearts without looking without it, externally, to the vast creation in which we have been placed.

Secondly, one is a fool to make such a statement because externally, he has assumed the bird’s eye view on reality, assuming to be higher up than all other human beings who believe that God exists. Remember, from chapter 1, that the Devil did this very thing when deceiving Eve. Though he did not deny the existence of God, he went one up, saying he knew better than God. Anyone who says there is no God, assumes the bird’s eye view on creation and reality, and says they know better than anyone. It is an absolute statement to say there is no God. It is a truth statement. The question is how did one arrive at such a conclusion, when the rest of us have arrived at the conclusion that God does exist? What index has the atheist used to measure this absolute statement against? It is the index of self, and assuming that self-deduced realities are the ultimate. It is nothing but the age-old attempt by the creature to rise above the Creator. Allow me to paraphrase: “The fool has comforted himself in the deepest recesses of his being, saying, ‘Ah! There is absolutely no such thing as God, period!’”

Think, for a moment, of one of Michelangelo’s masterpieces in art. It took the Renaissance artist nearly two years to complete his masterpiece sculpture David. Imagine if one day, the seventeen-foot statue came to life in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, and began proclaiming, “There was no Michelangelo! He never existed! I am, because I happened to happen!” How utterly foolish that would be. Wouldn’t the now alive statue be worthy of both mockery and sympathy? Being asked to hush, he would be shown proof that Michelangelo not only existed, but created him with his own hands.

Now isn’t that akin to what happens when masterpieces of a greater Artist, come to life because of God’s breath and begin proclaiming, “There is no God, there is no God”? When human beings, created by a mind so brilliant that it cannot be fathomed, begin saying, “There is no God”, it gives away another dangerous assumption on their part. They assume that they have thoroughly fathomed all dimensions of reality and the vast universe, and have arrived at the absolute conclusion in a corner of their heart, that there is no God. What a lamentable situation, one rightly called by the Bible as foolish.

Copyright, 2013, Kenny Damara. This article is an excerpt from the book Divided Desire.